


The Sylph

by AMarguerite



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-19
Updated: 2015-01-19
Packaged: 2018-03-08 05:11:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3196577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AMarguerite/pseuds/AMarguerite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ficlet for Hammie. The Thenardier siblings have an evening out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sylph

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hammie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hammie/gifts).



It was Eponine’s birthday, and Gavroche, at the very height of magnanimity, had acquired five tickets to a ballet from a drunk student. Gavroche was very pleased with the word “acquired,” the latest of the linguistic wonders to hit the Parisian streets (or, at least, the corners where Gavroche stole soap from barbers and pretended not to notice when drunk students handed over theatre tickets instead of love notes).

Eponine was always at the Rue Plumet these days, for reasons Gavroche was not bored enough to discover. He was fond of his family, in a vague way, and, morally certain that none of them had more interesting lives than he himself. “Poor mome,” he often thought, while picturing Eponine, “nothing doing in her life since the police came for the old gentleman. Even Montparnasse prefers my company to hers. I had better lift her spirits.”

They were in need of lifting. She was sitting in the dark, by the gate of the garden, crumpled up like an old broadside with a ballad no one recalled, or could sing. There was an air of virtuous suffering about her that Gavroche did not like.

"Come on," said Gavroche. "This is a sorry entertainment."

Eponine unfolded herself- stiffly, with the pitiful sluggishness of the hungry. “Shove off. I watch over what I like.”

Gavroche blew a raspberry at her. “What you like is proof of your bad taste. Your face says you ain’t having fun. You’re suffering.”

"Suffering," said Eponine, with all the airs of an actress taking on Racine, "is the highest part of liking something. You’re too young to understand."

This was worse than he had thought. Eponine had gone mad from hunger. Gavroche laid a soothing hand on her forearm. “Azelma’s out begging the Rue Mouffetard way. She should have enough for a Harlequin before the show.”

"I ain’t in the moods for clowns," said Eponine.

"No, no," Gavroche interrupted. "The other kind. The dish. All the bits of the leftover dinners in a wheel."

With a final glance at the gate, Eponine let herself be pulled away. She was distracted into letting the littlest mome steal some of her bread. To Azelma she murmured gentle things about how good the meal was, but even Gavroche at his most witty could not keep her from whatever she had watched in the Rue Plumet. She was only roused to real interest at the ballet, where Marie Taglioni danced the part of the Sylph who so occupied the thoughts of a Scotsman that he abandoned all about him. The momes were too awestruck at how the ballerinas floated on the balls of their feet to think of he parallels, but Azelma caught Gavroche’s eye. Her look was both pleading and patient, and she jerked her head at Eponine. Eponine stared down at the stage with a greater hunger than she had even shown at dinner. Her face once again bore that look of suffering bordering on a martyr’s beauty. Azelma and Gavroche pressed close on either side.


End file.
